Star Toilet Paper: Deals for the Ultimate Captive Audience

Jordan Silverman has found the ultimate captive audience for his marketing company.

The 22-year-old, class of 2012 philosophy graduate from the University of Michigan was sitting on the toilet in 2009 reading his phone when it hit him: "I'd always been interested in advertising and I thought about how everyone reads in the bathroom," he says. "You're sitting there, doing nothing and it's the perfect place for advertising." So, in 2010, he founded Star Toilet Paper.

The company prints coupons from approximately 70 local businesses and franchises in Michigan, New York and North Carolina directly on your run of the mill, two-ply toilet paper and places them in public washrooms at no cost to the venue. "It's funny because when I first thought of the idea, we tried to go to Staples and all of these places because we just figured, 'Oh, just run the toilet paper through the printer like its paper.'"


Of course, that experiment failed miserably, but thankfully, after six months of research and development, they found a third-party who had been printing designs on novelty toilet paper for 30 years using a proprietary technique, without which they'd basically have to close up shop.



"The reality is, there's so much less weight to toilet paper. So, the fact is, this is a very specialized manufacturer who is very good at what he does and we were lucky to find him. He's what has really enabled us to come to market."

The product came to market in December 2011. In the meantime, Silverman did everything he could to put his toilet paper in the public washrooms of local businesses.
"I started off just making a couple of calls a day, sending a couple of e-mails, getting frustrated when people said, 'No,' and then it really ramped up to the point where I was spending all day and night making calls, sending e-mails, attending networking events, making drop-offs and just showing up. We've run the gamut. We've tried everything."

Since then they've been on a roll -- more than a few, actually -- in the washrooms of dance studios, public libraries, bowling allies and the University of Michigan residences, featuring coupons from brands such as, Pita Pit, Sav-Mor Pharmacy, AllState, Benjamin Moore Paints, Smoothie King and others.

The venues receive as many rolls as they can carry at their specifications absolutely free, as long as they supply the contact info for for the other companies advertising in the venue and give Star Toilet Paper the opportunity to survey their customers and find out exactly what deals those customers would like to see on the toilet paper when they use the facilities.

The advertisers are charged half-a-cent for every time their coupon appears on a roll. So, for a $10,000 order, an advertiser gets 2 million coupons on 16,000 rolls. Each roll has 125 coupons per company with six companies per roll. Meanwhile, Silverman and his team control every aspect of the toilet paper, from the design of the ads to which gender of washroom the rolls get placed in.

"For example, one of our clients is an insurance agent and he felt as if he needed more female clients, so he was able just to advertise in the women's bathroom," says Silverman. "It's also nice because we have a women's boutique and obviously they just want to advertise in the women's bathroom as well. We have batting cages that want to cater to men, so obviously that's a nice opportunity."

There are other perks to being promoted on two-ply. Most print advertising costs four cents per ad or impression and, since everyone has to go to the washroom, but while they're there they're probably not using wads and wads of tissue, advertisers can get more exposure than they would ever get with print advertising. All of this becomes clear to them after the initial shocked reaction one would expect.

"Half of them laugh at us and say, 'That's awesome!' while others have that look of 'Huh?' on their face and don't really know what to say. But, we love that response because it's exactly what we're going for," says Silverman. "We know that one of the best things we have going for us is our uniqueness."

Unique yes, but not so unique that bargain hunters have to start clipping toilet paper and presenting brown streaked sheets at a counter for redemption. in fact, they don't have to touch the toilet paper at all. If they want the listed deal, they simply scan the QR code on the ad that they're interested in with their phone or go to the Star Toilet Paper website to type in the listed redemption code and voila, the deal is theirs to be had.

"Once it's scanned, we can have it do anything," says Silverman. "It can be redeemed automatically, it can take you to a Facebook page or to a landing page, it all depends on what the advertiser wants it to access, depending on their objectives. Some businesses want more walk-in traffic and others want more 'Likes' on their Facebook page."

It maybe bizarre, but Silverman says it's working. Their first group of local advertisers have all recommended that other companies advertise with Star Toilet Paper in the future and success is always measured based on whether they are succeeding at the specific goals the advertiser wanted to accomplish.

"If they just want to generate hits to their website, we've seen QR codes scanned 0.3% of the time, which is a great rate. In the first month, they saw 45 QR codes scanned out of 20,000 ads and 30 scans out of 10,000 ads, which is great. Plus, almost 60% of the advertisers saw a month over month increase in sales while they advertised with us," he confirms.

In fact, the concept has been successful enough that the product was featured on a recent episode of Anderson Live and Silverman confirms the company is already making plans to expand nationally and then into Canada.

"We've been talking to venues both small and large, so we definitely see Canada as the next logical place to be. We have a vision of total bathroom advertising domination. Mostly paper towels, but I have seen some clever urinal cakes that do make me want to go into that business."